5-Pleasant

In my pumpkin roundup the other day I didn’t include an Pumpkin Peeps. I actually went to the store and couldn’t find them. But I did get the next best thing, which would be the Peeps Spooky Cats.

When they were in their little tray they didn’t look very scary, except for that fear I have for conformity. In fact, they didn’t even look like black cats to me, but that could have been the lighting at the Walgreen’s. But no, I got them home and they are most definitely purple.

The newish product I was looking forward to showing here were the Cocoa Cats, which are a cocoa dusted/infused Cat Peep. Unfortunately there were none to be had (what’s with Peeps this year?). Anyway, I still have the Cocoa Peeps left over from All Candy Expo.

They don’t taste like much either, maybe a slight hint of cocoa to them, like a watered down cup of hot cocoa. What I found most curious about them is that they’re much less likely to go stale.

I’ve had these since June. I opened the package, took some photos and then put them back into the package. I left them in my tasting drawer (yes, the Candy Blogger has a drawer full of things to taste and write about) and checked them about a month later and they were pretty much the same. I didn’t seal up the bag or anything. So I left them out. Really left them out. Still, after an overnight sitting with a paper towel covering them and they were still soft. Eventually I got bored (or moved offices or something) and packed them back up and they went back into the drawer in their loose packaging.

Today I took them out and they’re still not stale enough. I bite into them and they give. Okay, maybe they’re a little tacky ... certainly more texture than usual.

Still, not my thing. As bunnies they’re kind of cute ... especially since I had bunnies this color when I was a kid. As a scary cat for Halloween ... well, purple is kind of sassy, a brown cat for Halloween is just lame.

Based on her review I went off in search of candy corn last week. My results were dismal. I came home with one bag. Some stores did not have ANY candy corn at all (well, some also had CHRISTMAS candy out already so they had the lame reindeer corn). I picked up the Brach’s Autumn Mix. It’s a mix of pumpkin mallowcreams, candy corn and Indian corn.

Brach’s always makes nice looking, high quality candy. Their candy corn is no different and uses top-notch ingredients. Though candy corn is basically sugar and corn syrup boiled into a stiff fondant, Brach’s throws a little honey in there for taste besides the colorings.

The candy corn is big and narrow. Good definition between the colors, bright and with an attractively sweet smell. It’s soft and a bit grainy, but I kind of like that. Plain candy corn is eaten by putting the entire thing in the mouth and chewing.

Another variety of candy corn that is seen from time to time is often called “Indian Corn” but is really chocolate candy corn. Well, kind of chocolate. Someone walked by a vat of candy corn batter with a chocolate bar.

In order to rationalize the purchase of Indian corn, one must eat it by biting off the chocolate bottom first. It tastes like candy corn, but perhaps with a tint of a Tootsie Roll chocolatey-ness added.

The big plus in this bag of the Autumn mix is that it has the pumpkins in it. They’re a dense, semi-soft piece of sugar. There’s a throat burning sweetness that makes you want to go back to eating the candy corn for a moment until the lure of the large, compact sugar-singularity calls to you again. By the time you learn your lesson, the bag is empty, your teeth hurt and your stomach aches.

When I was in grad school I saw a production of a play called Seventy Scenes of Halloween by Jeffrey M. Jones. Candy corn is featured heavily in it. I don’t know why I mention that, but you know, in case someone was looking for advice on what plays to include in a candy themed theatre festival, I’d love to help!

I like candy corn as a concept. I like it as decoration. I don’t think it’s great as a candy, but I have to give it a passing grade because I keep eating it. I really like to buy it when it’s 10 cents for a pound of it sometime in late November. Then it scores a 7 out of 10.

In the continuing quest for “that candy people bring you from vacation” I’ve got two new ones.

This one is called, not surprisingly, Rock Candy. Though it’s nothing like the large sugar crystals most of us call Rock Candy, it really looks like rocks. They look like those pretty tumbled, polished and choice pebbles you see in jars a kitschy gift shops. These came from Colorado.

They’re really jelly beans. Each apparently random variety of rock is actually a different flavor. The panning and artistry on them is great. The colors are deep and complex and really convey the “rockness” of them. It would have been nice if they gave you some sort of guide about the flavors though.

Green: Lime ... yeah, just plain old lime. Sweet with a nice floral aromatic that of course reminded me of household cleaners.

Purple: Grape. Kind of a strange and artificial tasting grape, but the prettiest of all the rocks.

Putty: Lemon. Really nice and flavorful. Wholly unexpected because of the color.

Brown: Spice. Nice and strong with a spicy cinnamon and licorice combo. It might just be licorice, but I can’t tell and why is it brown?

Aqua: Wintergreen. Nice and cool.

The other rock candy were these Glacier River Rocks from “Montana’s Glacier Country”. They really do look like rocks. Instead of going for the ultra-polished look, these are kind of lumpy. Most are the size of raisins and even have a bit of pucker to their coats. They’re muted colors and the shells of the rocks are soft and matte.

Inside the crisp shell is a rather sweet and milky tasting milk chocolate. The crunch is nice and the look is great, but the chocolate is not very chocolatey - more milky and because of the ratio of shell to filling, thy don’t have a lot of flavor.

I really liked the look of both candies, even together.

Neither are a candy I’d probably purchase as a native of either of these areas, but they’re pretty and easy to carry gifts that have a little more pizazz than the ordinary salt water taffy.

Months and months ago a reader suggested I get familiar with a strange favorite it Australia - musk sticks. Basically they’re pressed candy stick flavored like musk. You know, the perfume. I figured if I’ve eaten violet candies, rosewater ice cream and 10 year old Lifesavers, there’s no reason I shouldn’t try these.

I found them at Mel & Rose’s, which seems to carry a lot of Australian candies. The package doesn’t make them look that appealing, the word musk has those little “smell wafts” coming off of it. The candies themselves are the pressed chalk variety like Pep-O-Mint, not a hard candy like the Butter Rum Lifesavers.

They smell like incense or a soap shop. It’s more like a lightly floral patchouli. So when I took the photo and then put the roll in my desk drawer, it was kind of like a sachet in there.

The little candy is sweet and of course easy to crunch. The flavor has no other notes besides this soapy detergent scent and made me wonder if this is what it’d be like to eat incense cones. There isn’t any listing of ingredients on the package or dietary info, so for all I know, they are meant to be burned.

I have no idea if the Lifesavers version of musk is consistent with the other musk sticks so popular in Australia and New Zealand, but I think my curiosity is satisfied. I suppose if I were trying to cover up strong mouth odors (like smoking or antibiotic side effects) this might be a good candy, but for some reason I think my neck should be perfumed, not my breath.

Note: though these candies are branded Lifesavers, they’re made by licensing agreement by Nestle.

Nerds have been around since the early eighties and I’ve never tried them. I was an early member of the Wonka fan club (you had to send in proofs of purchase) and I’ve never tried them. There’s actually a pretty long list of very common candy items that I’ve never tried, but this was one I decided to tick off my list.

Nerds are little panned crunchy and sour candies. They’re made by taking a little crystal of sugar and then tumbling them with successive layers of sour coating, then a coat of color. Nerds are irregular with some as small as a sesame seed and others as large as a dried pea. The unique selling proposition with Nerds is that they come in packages with two flavors in them and a separate dispensing opening. The flavor combo that got me off my bum to try them was Lightning Lemon/Amped Apple.

What I found out is that I’m not really missing anything by not eating Nerds.

The texture is good and the consistent crunchiness has a lot to recommend it, however, there’s really no flavor there. The distinction between the apple and lemon is rather scant. They’re both tart but little else. As for the SOUR! emblazoned on the box, well, they were sour, but not in all caps.

I can see these being very useful for a decorative element for cupcakes, but I can’t see myself buying them again. I know they have their fans, but I think I’m going to stick with Tart ‘n’ Tiny. For the record, I’m not an ice-chewer, so maybe that’s who these are marketed for. I have actually purchased the new Nerds Rope twice, but I haven’t actually eaten them (I think I gave one away in one of the contests), but I suspect they’re better in combination with something else like a gummi.

(While I’m on the subject of decorating with candy, check out Candy Addict’s Swimming Pool Cake ... if he decided to make an aquarium instead, this would make great colored gravel.)

Here’s a candy that never entered into my field of candy vision: the Mint Julep. In fact, until about a year ago, I’m not sure I knew these existed. It’s not like I’m mint-blind. I guess what brought these into my realm was a new push by Necco to introduce them to new generations. That and there was a huge barrel of them at the All Candy Expo’s freebie room.

Frankly, I was afraid they were going to be like Mary Janes and pull out my teeth or something. Or maybe they were going to be like mint-flavored Starbursts.

But here’s what they are: they’re spearmint taffy.

They were nice. Not super strong tasting, very soft and chewy and pleasant. They didn’t rock my world, but I think they have a solid place in it now. They’re a really satisfying little candy - larger than a Starburst and in a flavor you’re not going to get anywhere else in this format. I can’t see myself buying a tub of these online or anything, but I would pick up one or two after brunch or something at the local diner to clear my palate.

Mint Juleps are also known as Southies and were made by the Squirrel company that also makes Nut Zippers. They are most often sold in little tubs by the register at convenience stores and diners. (This type of retailing is called “changemakers” as people will often spend the change from their bill on little items. The tubs are placed in places where it makes sense for such an impulse buy.) They were introduced in the 30s and then disappeared back in the nineties as the company was bought out and went through some changes. Necco brought them back about a year ago.

In case you were wondering what’s in the drink also called a Mint Julep, it’s simple syrup with some muddled spearmint sprigs in it, then combined with Bourbon and served over ice with more mint.

Mint Juleps are gluten free according to the Necco website (and the drink probably is too!).

This is breaking news. Or at least it was breaking news to me: the Snickers Almond bar now contains peanuts ... I’m not talking about “processed in a facility and equipment along with peanuts” kind of thing. I’m talking about a main ingredient. (Click on the photos for more readable versions.)

I don’t know if I would have noticed, except that the Sav-on had both the old version of the bar (sans peanuts) and the new one side by side and I was curious why the packaging was suddenly different and what made the new one “more satisfying.”

So I purchased both and went off to the Candy Blog labs to do some analyses. First, the bars say they weigh the same, but when placed on the trusty postal scale the More Satisfying with Peanuts version came in at exactly 2.0 ounces and the Less Satisfying with just Almonds clocked in at 1.9 ounces. What’s even more puzzling about this is that the label says that they weigh 1.76 ounces ... at least Mars is generous.

The original version shown above was easier to slice and seemed more “solid”. There weren’t copious amounts of almonds, but a fair amount. The bar was rather bland, as I mentioned in my review before. But there is something missing here, a toastiness, some sort of flavor.

So the big thing I noticed right away was how difficult it was to slice this bar easily. It was kind of mucky ... not melted or anything, just not as structural. I think there may be more caramel now. Instead of just going back to a better tasting nougat, the Mars folks created the hybrid Snickers/Mars Frankenbar. It’s a Mars bar that tastes like a Snickers. Really, why buy this? It doesn’t taste like almonds ... if anything, it’s just a Snickers bar that’s a little smaller.

As a touchstone I went out and bought/consumed a standard Snickers bar. It really tasted no different except the Snickers Almond was a little crunchier because almonds are bigger than peanuts.

This got me to thinking about the ingredients, so here’s a run down of the top contents of the Less Satisfying Snickers Almond, More Satisfying Snickers Almond and the Satisfying Snickers (Peanut):

While I find the More Satisfying Snickers Almond a little more tasty than before, its resemblance to the classic Snickers Peanut makes it superfluous. There are so few almond choices out there, why take this one away? I’m giving the Now More Satisfying Snickers Almond bar the same rating I gave the original.

(I’m also a little miffed that I consumed about 750 calories for this one review! I just hope none of them contained mouse droppings.)

Note: I looked at the Snickers website and they still list the old ingredients for the Snickers Almond bar.

UPDATE 9/2/2008: Well, the old new Snickers Almond is back. Here’s a brief revisit with the bar:

Product: Mars Snickers Almond
Previous Review: 12/28/2005
Change: reverting to old recipe (eliminating peanut ingredients from previous version)
Result: A great bar with a long history and I’m glad that it’s back to a more classic formulation so it bumps up a notch. 6 out of 10

There was nothing else like a Jolly Rancher when they first came out. Back then green apple and watermelon were radical flavors ... actually, when I was a kid, the slang term “radical” wasn’t even in use yet.

I really wanted these to be good ... like a gummi bear version of a Jolly Rancher, only in Jolly Rancher flavors.

They come in four flavors - Watermelon, Apple, Orange and Cherry. They’re a little tart jelly candy with a sugar sand coating on them. They’re not gummis at all, there’s not even any gelatin or pectin in the ingredients list, it’s sugar, corn syrup and corn starch plus a little flavor, tartness and color. They’re kind of small morsels too, about the same size around as a nickel.

Cherry - not quite a black cherry flavor, this was like a sour cherry and definitely a chemical flavor. This one differed most from the hard candies I was used to.

Watermelon - oh, it’s like summer distilled into a strange pink chemical. Sweet, tart and floral all at once but not really much like the real stuff. But still good.

Apple - tart and appley with that distinct artificial taste, but completely faithful to the Jolly Rancher flavor.

Orange - as usual, my favorite. Tart and with a good citrus essence mixed with a completely middle-of-the-road Tang flavor. Satisfying.

The package warns that mouth irritation may result from the high “sour level” but I didn’t find them that sour at all. The flavors actually blended pretty well - you can pop an apple and watermelon in your mouth together or an orange and cherry and find a pleasant surprise. But they weren’t “Screamingly” sour in the slightest.

My biggest quarrel with these is that they go sticky very quickly. I don’t know if it was the insane heat of Los Angeles or that they just do that after the package has been opened. It doesn’t seem to have effected the flavor, except maybe they’ve bled together a smidge. But really, there’s nothing really compelling here. It’s not a true chew like a Starburst or a gummi or a jelly ... they’re just kind of soft and certainly not sour enough to warrant being called anything more than tangy jellies.

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